WACO brings Orioles to town

WAYLAND - Eighty-five miles is a long way to travel for a football scrimmage but the Springville Orioles made the trek to Wayland Friday.

'Springville was in our district two years ago and we play them in a junior varsity game on Aug. 31, so we are used to making the trip back and forth,” WACO head coach Chad Edeker said.

Both the WACO Warriors and the Orioles treated the scrimmage like a real game with score and officials.

'We both just wanted to get our kids on film against another varsity team,” Edeker said. 'In eight-man football, it is hard to put a varsity quality scout team together with limited numbers.”

The eight-man teams worked their best to excel and the officials worked on some of their new duties as well.

There is to be an officials' timeout two minutes in length every four minutes of game time for teams to rest, socially distance, sanitize and hydrate. will be taken every 4 minutes of game clock time in order for teams to properly sanitize and hydrate during the contest. The officials did not get that timeout called on time Friday.

The teams did not do everything right either, but it was a process to gather knowledge on what needs work.

'I think we learned a lot about ourselves,” Edeker said. 'Offensively, we did a lot of things right and were able to drive the ball.”

The Warriors executed an effective fake punt for a first down on their first drive.

'On defense, we have to work on pursuit angles,” Edeker said. 'Our linebackers and defensive backs overran their ball carriers quite a bit.”

Twice in the first quarter, WACO gave up one-play drives for touchdowns. One was a run and one was a pass.

'We had a couple of blown coverages on long passes,” Edeker said. 'All things are fixable with some more reps in practice.”

WACO starts its season Friday with a 75-mile trip to Victor to play HLV. HLV was 8-3 last season and advanced to the state quarterfinals. The teams played in Wayland last season with HLV edging WACO 45-42. The Warriors ended the year with a 4-5 record.

HLV has won the last three times the teams met. WACO won the previous four contests.